A new drug called listo hits the streets of the Downtown Eastside. Shortly after, people begin to disappear. Around the same time, an upscale restaurant called La Mancha opens up and is quickly busy with wealthy patrons riding a wave of gentrification through the neighbourhood.

Then Manny goes missing. At first, our protagonist, a weathered old man named Arnold, doesn’t think much of it. He figures his friend will turn up soon enough. But when Manny doesn’t, Arnold quickly grows obsessed with tracking him down.

The vacant lot where Manny used to rest has been bulldozed, but the developer behind the project assures Arnold no one was displaced. “This building will grow the community,” he says.

Arnold becomes more determined and sets off on a search across the city. Meanwhile, addicts injecting listo continue to go missing.

Unbeknown to Arnold, their bodies are turning up in the kitchen at La Mancha. They’re butchered, given a little seasoning, and served to those patrons new to the Downtown Eastside who can afford to eat at the pricy restaurant.

In a telephone interview, the comic’s cocreator, Zac Thompson, acknowledges obvious parallels with the legend of Sweeney Todd, a barber in 1840s London who served his customers’ flesh in meat pies. But he said that Soylent Green, a 1973 film starring Charlton Heston served as an equal source of inspiration.

“Cannibalism has a pretty rich history in fiction in general,” Thompson told the Straight. "You have people like Oscar Wilde who were writing about this stuff a while back. And while it’s become sort of this clichéd horror thing, it’s also been used to criticize class structure. And so we wanted to revert back to that, as opposed to strictly for the gore aspects of it.

“We know that it’s dark and it’s really crazy, what exists on the pages of the comic,” he continued. “But we don’t think that it’s too far of a stretch from the daily life that people go through down there. Minus the cannibalism.”

The first issue of The Dregs goes on sale tomorrow (January 25). Thompson and his cowriter, Lonnie Nadler, will be at Golden Age Collectables at 852 Granville Street, signing copies of the comic, from 1 p.m. onward.

In the same interview, Nadler acknowledged that many readers might think listo is really fentanyl. But he noted the story was mostly written before the onset of Vancouver’s real-world overdose epidemic, which is largely driven by that synthetic opioid.

“Zak and I really wanted to build this world out and look at what a new drug introduced onto the scene might look like and how it might affect not only the people there but how it also might affect the protagonist’s ability to solve this crime and navigate his way through the city,” Nadler said. “And then it plays a pretty sinister role as the story continues.”

Thompson said that in researching the comic, the pair spoke with many residents who helped them get a feel for the neighbourhood and the changes that gentrification will likely bring.

“We spent a lot of time going to the Downtown Eastside and talking to the people who lived down there, trying to communicate their stories authentically on the page,” he said. “For us, this is really a big love letter to Vancouver.”

The Dregs is illustrated by Eric Zawadzki with colouring done by Dee Cunniffee. It’s is published by Black Mask Studio. In addition to Golden Age Collectables, The Dregs is available at Tazmanian Comics, Big Pete’s Comics, and for sale online via Amazon and Comixology.